Our Future?

McCain telegraphs our future under a McCain-Palin regime in a speech in Pennsylvania when he stated, "this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners."

Palin and Diana

Who is really royalty?
Some genealogists connected Sarah Palin and Princess Diana as 10th cousins. Remember Diana was only a Princess by marriage. Obama, however, by virtue of being an 11th cousin of President Bush, is, through that relationship, related to most of the royalty in Europe.

McCain's Brain #4

Calling for Charlie

Worked this morning on the phone bank for Charlie Brown for Congress. Wearing my Charlie Brown t-shirt. The work was much better today. Instead of calling Republicans we were calling Decline to State voters and leaving nice short messages on the machines of those who did not answer.
I had no bad reactions from people I did talk to, even those who were going to vote for McClintock, who I just found out has been endorsed by the KKK in the recent past. Nice.

The tree cutters are going to be out tomorrow to get a head start on the felling due to start on Monday. Hard to think that we will have about 10K board feet taken out and will have to pay much and get little for these prime pine and cedar saw logs. PGE is looking to take down the three trees on the side lot near the street that we had left off our application to the city. PGE has noticed that those trees are a hazard to the road and power lines. Sorry that this includes the bent oak that was a favorite of Val's. Wm has a hard hat for me, if I want to go out and see what they are doing.

We are planning the first yard sale this weekend. I am going to put up the treadle sewing machine and the two old school desks, but at fairly high prices. So we shall see. Plus lots of other stuff. Wm says he will help.

From Milk to the Military

Fake microchips flow from unruly bazaars in rural China to dubious kitchen-table brokers in the U.S. and into complex weapons. Senior Pentagon officials publicly play down the danger, but government documents, as well as interviews with insiders, suggest possible connections between phony parts and breakdowns.

Why are we not surprised to read that the unregulated capitalism that currently flourishes in China is not only a threat to our health but also to our national security.
Salvage operations in China take microchips out of products and then counterfeit them. So we see tons of "Texas Instruments" microchips and "Cisco Systems" routers imported from China. Hazardous fakes that can destroy our economy and our security.

Wall Street USA

This dates to 1999 so you have to substitute Bernanke for Greenspan. Otherwise it plays quite well.

Palin Should Have Known

American Standard Version: Proverbs 10:10 He who winks the eye causes trouble, And a babbling fool will be ruined.

Look Alikes

Neel Kashkari assistant to Secretary of Treasury has been named to head up bail-out.Is it a requirement in Treasury that you must try to look like your boss?

Afghanistan is Unwinnable as a War

If we continue to pursue a war in Afghanistan, we cannot win a military victory. We will be eventually driven out the same as the Russians were. The Taliban do not care about losses. They are the hordes who just keep on coming. Afghanistan will become a poor failed terrorist state eventually taken back over by the Taliban.

But if we have the courage to pursue a different course, we could win. Christopher Hitchens is saying what I have been saying for a while. He says we need to buy the opium crop from the farmers, giving them income but depriving the Taliban of income.

It can be burned or thrown away or perhaps more profitably used to manufacture the painkillers of which the United States currently suffers a shortage. (As it is, we allow Turkey to cultivate opium poppy fields for precisely this purpose.) Why not give Afghanistan the contract instead? At one stroke, we help fill its coffers and empty the main war chest of our foes while altering the "hearts-and-minds" balance that has been tipping away from us.

I think we need to go on from there and pay the farmers to plant other crops. Hitchens mentions reforestation and the replanting of vine crops. Whatever we do we need to be working with the people and building them up and considering the Taliban as more of a police action.

We don't need to send in more troops. We need a radically new strategy.

In testimony before Congress Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is quoted:

as saying that suicide bombings in Afghanistan were up 27 percent in 2007 over 2006... they are up 600 percent over 2005, and that all insurgent attacks are up 400 percent over 2005."

We need to work on the corruption in the government, too. Apparently Karzai's brother is involved in the heroin trade and has stopped the seizure of some heroin.

Our current government is really incapable of thinking outside the box. So this is why

a secret US intelligence report which says the political and military situation in Afghanistan is "grim" will be withheld from the public until after the election...

The Bushies don't have a good idea so they just hide the situation.

McCain now McNasty

From Arianna:

The McCain campaign is all set to roll out its message for the last 30 days of the campaign: "We may not be good for your bank account, your mortgage, your health care, or your job security -- but none of that will matter if you are dead. John McCain: If You Want to Live."

Others are saying that the only thing that might help McCain is a national security crisis real or not real, that would sway independents.

Halloween is coming

For all those parents of grandchildren who love Halloween. Are you worried yet about chinese candy with melamine or chinese candy with lead? Most American brands of candy are made in China. So think carefully about that annual Halloween candy gorge. I think we will give out California raisins and maybe recycle some of those packs of Halloween crayons. I am not going to give children potentially poisonous candy, even if the FDA does say small amounts of melamine is OK.

Remember 1932

In 1932 although times were certainly getting harder with bank failures and unemployment rising, no one at the time was saying that they were in a depression. It is only from a historical perspective that we date the "Great Depression" from 1929 to 1939. At the time they considered what they were in just a recession. As things got worse after the election of 1932, the powerless Hoover asked FDR to help, but FDR said that he would wait until he was sworn in.

In my opinion, and I think this will be backed up historically, we have been in a recession since last December. I think this October or end of September will be called the beginning of the Depression of 2008. And things will get worse. The stock market will go down to 8,000. More banks will fail and more businesses will fail for lack of credit and lack of customers. This "Rescue Bill" will take months to implement and even then may not work.

There are very few elders around who were of working age in the Depression. They are the only ones who have real memories of that time. Who did OK and who did not?

Although our parents are gone, we remember some of what they told us of those times.

Debt free family farms that were not in the drought regions did fine. So my mom's family did OK and even sent her to college in the 30's. Bill's dad's family did not do so well because of the drought in Nebraska. His dad worked at any kind of job he could get and even rode the rails for a while. My dad joined the Marines. Bill's mom worked as a housemaid and was forced to give all her money to her parents. Everyone scrimped and saved and developed a habit of living low. It was the only way to get by.

All of us are going to need to develop some Depression ethics. Scrimp and save and live low and you will get by.

Auntie Sarah

Cynthia Boaz makes an excellent comparison between Sarah Palin and the Aunts of Margaret Atwood's book "The Handmaids Tale". Welcome to Gilead, Governor Palin.

Maverick

Make-Believe Maverick in Rolling Stone
This new article gives a comprehensive well sourced life story of John McCain. Not a life to be proud of. Remember, if you have to keep telling people you are a maverick, as McCain has more that 1200 times in public speeches, you really are only trying to be branded a maverick and are not one in truth.
NYT on the Original Mavericks

Take me out to the Cal Game

UCB 24 ASU 14
The game was good. Not a Screamer. But a good win. Even in the rain showers.
The Cal Fan
and Friends
The Cal Band Marching Tubas

California ready to Go Belly Up

Per the LAT, Gov will be asking the Fed for a $7 billion loan to bail out credit crunched California.

The state of California is the biggest of several governments nationwide that are being locked out of the bond market by the global credit crunch. If the state is unable to access the cash, administration officials say, payments to schools and other government entities could quickly be suspended and state employees could be laid off.

Debate Flowchart

Save My Seventh Home

The current law (which became law in 10/05) does not allow the saving of a person's first and only home which is the issue for Democrats. I am not sure how many of the 6-10 thousand foreclosures in the USA per day are involved in bankruptcy procedures, but there are probably a great many.

I was unaware that there was a loophole in the bankruptcy law that allows the saving of a person's second through umpteenth home, plane and yacht. This is just another example of how our system treats the ultra rich differently from ordinary people.

During the VP debate Biden brought up this discrepancy and Palin responded that McCain did support restructuring the bankruptcy law to allow people to keep their primary residence. The McCain Campaign is now stating that she misspoke. But it is highlighting a specific difference that is a example of how McCain is for the rich and Obama is for the middle class.

ACORN, a liberal group which advocates on behalf of low- and moderate-income people, seized on Palin's seeming endorsement of the Obama-Biden position and is now trying to use them to pressure McCain to change his official position.

McCain has no plans to budge on this issue.

McCain likes to say that he is not a rich man. But we all know that he is married to a rich woman and shares in all her wealth.

Homer Tries to Vote For Obama

76% of voters in Nevada County are Permanent Absentee Voters. Our Clerk-Recorder says that absentee voting costs half as much as regular voting on election day. He would like to see our entire county go to Absentee Voting with just 3 centralized polling places manned on election day for those who wanted to hand their ballot in on election day.

Palin vs Biden

Palin will dazzle all with a blizzard of well delivered nonsense and fabulous sexy smiles. For more exact content of her answers on policy see here and here.